


The Treaty of Her Kiss

by fiftysevenacademics (rapiddescent)



Category: Henry V - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works, The Hollow Crown (2012)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M, Flirting, Kissing, Marriage, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 09:17:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3805003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rapiddescent/pseuds/fiftysevenacademics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Henry V and Katherine of Valois' meeting (Hollow Crown version), from Katherine's point of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Treaty of Her Kiss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allisonfunn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allisonfunn/gifts).



> who submitted the prompt, "Henry V Hollow Crown Kate", for the first Bard's Birthday Exchange.

"Is my father a farmer, that he hands me over to this...this _Englishman_ like a prized cow?" 

A length of partially embroidered blue wool leads Katherine's charge around the room, the flag of womankind flapping at the front of a battle she already knows she will lose. She hurls it across the room and listens for the satisfying clink of the needle against the stone wall. 

"And he gives me, the daughter of a _king_ , away for dukedoms so worthless, he can waste them on a foreigner and provoke no ire from our nobles?"

Alice stands near the door, to send for help if her Lady rages too wildly, and to prevent her leaving the room in this state. 

Katherine runs to retrieve the wool, and crushes it into a ball that she throws at a silver mirror, a gift from her father that sits on a table, sending it clattering to the floor.

"All of _France_ should come with me! _France_ is my dowry! He should give me to save _France_ , not Harfleur."

"My Lady _must_ marry," Alice offers tentatively.

"I will marry the man who deserves me, no, the man who _earns_ me."

The sentence sucks the breath from Katherine, and hangs in the air between the two women. They both know that Katherine will have to marry whomever her father chooses. She refuses to leave her room for days before the messenger returns with Henry's answer, short and simple: "No. I will take Harfleur, and everything else that belongs to me in France."

Katherine's heart wraps itself hotly around those words, melting them, taking them into her veins, where they sear until her body sings, "I am his." 

All she knows of King Henry is that he left behind his decadent youth to challenge her father. He is young, and enjoys pleasures of the flesh as much as the thrill of conquest. She knows nothing but the ways of gentle ladies-- embroidery, idle gossip, innocent flirtation, prayer-- but feels herself his equal. They are both born of kings. She will make him respect his greatest prize as much as he will surely desire it.

"Alice, you have been in England, and you speak the language. I will need to learn. Will you teach it to me?"

Katherine has time to learn. Agincourt merely whets Henry's appetite for France. A taste for blood replaces a taste for sack in this king her father once taunted with tennis balls. He returns two years later and ravages his way through Normandy. He shows no mercy to starving women and children in Rouen, and after that city falls, marches to the very gates of Paris. A genteel kind of panic pervades the court as Henry's army waits outside the walls. Ladies slip bread from the table into their sleeves to hide in their chambers and men send discreet inquiries to distant relatives in the country. Minor incidents between children turn into pitched battles that parents punish harshly. Even ladies' lapdogs dogs pant and roam the halls.

Katherine has a different reaction. Henry's nearness makes her giddy. For nearly five years she has pictured him marching through the gates and taking her from her father's arm. They say he is tall and broad-shouldered, with blond curls and startling blue eyes that shift from gentle to fierce. Sometimes he pulls her roughly from her father's side, twisting her wrist and causing her to stumble against his chest. She pleads with her eyes, but his implacable face is fixed on her father, his new subject. Others, he kisses her hand on bended knee and begs her father's blessing. Sometimes she imagines how he will kiss her, how he will undress her, on their wedding night. And now, he lies practically outside her window. When she says her prayers at night, she imagines him also saying his, and thrills to think that even as she lays her head on her pillow, he might be doing the same. Whether he lays siege to Paris or takes the city through diplomacy means little to her, for either way, she will wind up in his bed.

As the months crawl, she buries her excitement in the delicate rituals of a princess. She lets herself be dressed, groomed, flattered, and entertained by her ladies through daily cycles of meals, prayers and visits that once filled her life with joy but now chafe her patience until word flies through the court that he has done it: by treaty, Henry and his heirs will be the new kings of France after her father dies. Her father sends for her and a charge runs through her.

"Is this what a soldier feels on the eve of a battle?" she wonders. She claps with fervor. "Alice! To arms! Come, help me dress!" 

She chooses a simple blue gown and wears her blonde hair loose about her shoulders. Her virginal appearance conceals thoughts she's sure no virgin should ever think, but that she fears Henry will see in her demeanor. He, of all men, will spot the signs of a wanton, and surely what they have done in her mind makes her one. From her spot on the other side of the room from the table where sit the men, she sees Henry enter the room. His red velvet doublet hugs his shapely chest and his golden crown rises from waves of the same color. A sword dangles alongside his thigh on a belt that emphasizes the leonine movement of his hips as he strides toward her father. He is more beautiful and more graceful than she had been told.

He keeps his eyes fixed on her father as he approaches them, but after he has greeted him, his eyes dart in her direction and capture hers in their blue-hot orbit until she blushes and looks away. Her father nods approvingly at what appears to be her modesty, but Alice clucks softly and pokes her in the back, as if to say, "Watch yourself, young lady."

Her father greets Henry like a friend, with terms of joy and endearment that do not match their strained gestures. Her brother clenches his jaw, even though his lips are parted in a welcoming smile, and a vein pulses in her father's temple. Will he be remembered as the king who lost France to this wastrel, this _Englishman_? She looks at him with pity. His shame is her gain. She will be queen of both England and France. Gratitude floods toward the melodious voice speaking English in front of them, for wanting France so badly, he would not be bought off and took it by force instead. Back then, she was just a princess, bartered like livestock, and now, _she is France itself_ , and _her_ sons, not her brothers', will be its kings. Their conversation drones on but all she hears is his silky voice until everyone makes ready to hammer out the details somewhere else and Henry says the words she's been waiting to hear.

"Leave our cousin, Katherine, here with us, for she is our chief demand and is at the forefront of the articles of our treaty."

Her heart leaps and she looks toward her father, hoping she does not appear too eager. Her father consents, on the condition that Alice remain, too, and when the three of them are alone, Henry addresses her from his chair.

"Fair Katherine! Would you condescend to teach this rough soldier words gentle enough to enter a lady's ear, so that he may plead his love?"

She affects the resentful postures of her family, feigns ignorance of his words, even as they tickle her in secret places and make her want to laugh. Henry may have led a soldier's life these past few years, but till then was little more than lady's ears (and other parts) his life's pursuit. Even such low women as he bedded must have required payment in words, if not coin, from time to time, and when she catches his eye, is certain that he has seen through her disguise as she sees through his. She plays her part.

"Your Majesty shall mock me. I cannot speak your England."

"Oh, fair Katherine! If you will love me soundly with your French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with your English tongue. Do you like me, Kate?"

He says it with unnecessary urgency, because Katherine must marry him whether she loves him or not, or condemn all of France to further war. This man, this king, this conqueror disarms her, asking boyishly for love she would freely give right now, yet virtue demands she withhold a little longer.

"Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell what is _like me_."

She can feel Alice's eyes boring a hole in the back of her head with the message, "Good girl, play your part. Don't screw this up, Kate."

Henry woos her with ardent words and a voice like honey. She fights back the urge to respond in English, to acknowledge that she understands almost everything he says. Alice stays close reminding her with looks and gestures to not give France away so easily.

"Is it possible that I could love the enemy of France?" she asks haughtily.

"No, it is not possible you should love the enemy of France, Kate. But, in loving me, you should love the friend of France, for I love France so well that I will not part with a village of it. I will have it all mine. And, Kate, when France is mine and I am yours, then yours is France and you are mine."

The words seize her stomach like a dragon inside her. She bites her tongue to keep from throwing herself in his arms and shouting her love till the stone walls ring with it. 

"I cannot understand what is that."

"Well, Kate, let me tell you in French." Henry begins with French that clings to the roof of his mouth and clatters off his tongue so roughly it makes her laugh and Alice laughs along, too. She can no longer hold back her affection for the king, and her act begins to slip.

"Oh, fie my false French, Kate. I will tell you in plain English that I love you. I dare not swear to think you love me, and yet, my blood begins to flatter me that you do. If you can love a humble, homely man like me, put off your maiden blushes and think like an empress. Take me by the hand," he kneels and stretches his hand toward her, "and when you say, Harry of England, I am yours, I will tell you, England is yours, Ireland is yours, France is yours, and Harry Plantagenet is yours."

He bows his head in offering to her love and she feels the distance between this moment and their marriage bed disappear.

"That is as it shall please my father."

"Oh, it shall please your father."

She laughs as delight flickers in his eyes.

"Then it shall also please me," she replies, taking his hand. He tries to kiss it and as much as she wants to feel his lips, she skips aside and begs him, in French, not to demean himself by kissing her hand like a servant.

"Then I will kiss your lips!"

She protests that this is not the custom in France for girls to kiss before marriage, which Alice interprets for Henry, who chuckles, and replies, "Oh Kate, nice customs bow before great kings."

He steps closer and directs her chin toward his mouth with one finger. She closes her eyes and lets the blood beat in her temples, feeling her heart batter her chest, and warmth flooding her legs as his lips touch hers and linger. She keeps her mouth pressed to his as he begins to pull away, urging him to taste the secret they have kept all these years, not wanting a single second of life without his lips on hers ever again.

"You have witchraft in your lips, Kate," Henry murmurs, pleased, but not surprised by her response, and Katherine feels very close to him, equal to him. The son of a king, the daughter of a king. A king and queen. A man and woman who desire each other, and will soon be wed.


End file.
